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Lachit Bordoloi is a much admired leader of Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS), a human rights organization in Assam founded in 1991 which has been leading vigorous campaigns for justice, accountability and democratic transparency in the State. Since its inception, the organization has faced and survived high levels of violent reprisals by the State forces, including the assassination of its founder secretary-general Parag Kumar Das and scores of other prominent functionaries. Local popularity as well as the fierceness of the State’s repressive ire the organization inspires are probably due to the fact that it does not limit its activities to documenting custodial killings, rape, illegal arrests and torture committed by the security forces; it also engages with contentious issues like the right to self-determination, struggles of nationalities, their rights over natural resources and the cultural and linguistic rights of indigenous people. MASS has also exposed the secret killings of hundreds of ULFA militants and others sympathetic to the campaign for the right to self-determination which the security forces carried out in the period between 1998 and 2001 by recruiting “militant collaborators” or surrendered members of ULFA.
Lachit Bordoloi is also a prominent member of the People’s Consultative Group (PCG) established in 2005 to pave the way for a negotiated settlement between the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the Indian State. The group was constituted after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had appealed to ULFA and other insurgent groups in the Northeast, at a press conference held in Imphal on 21 November 2004, to seek “peaceful resolution of all outstanding problems”, openly inviting “all those young men and women who have taken to arms to give up this path and work with us to bring about peace and prosperity in northeastern states.” Along with other members of the PCG, Lachit has been meeting with the leaders of the Union government, including the Prime Minister. The national media widely reported the group’s meeting with Verappa Moily, the AICC General-Secretary in-charge of Assam, which happened in the last week of January 2008.
The government of India has been holding these meetings, aimed to bring ULFA to the negotiating table, presumably with the knowledge that Lachit, a prominent member of the group, has the necessary contacts and the moral influence to do so.
On 11 February 2008, Lachit was arrested following a much publicized confession about ULFA’s plans to hijack Indian aeroplanes flying out of Guwahati made purportedly by an arrested ULFA militant Manoj Tamuly. The state officials did their best to fan sensational publicity about ULFA rebels trained by Afghani militants and supported and sponsored by Bangladesh based jihadi organizations and Pakistan’s notorious ISI, all set to hijack civil aviation aircrafts flying out of Guwahati to Thimpu in Bhutan and then on to Rawalpindi. The bid was ostensibly foiled by the arrests.
The arrest of Lachit Bordoloi on charges of his association with terrorist conspiracies and extortion rackets provoked widespread condemnation and protest in Assam and outside. Several political groups and human rights organizations as well as prominent citizens across the region denounced the arrest as an orchestration to derail the peace process and to demoralize a man who possessed the aura of personal and political integrity and popular support to bring ULFA to the negotiating table. Whole of Assam observed a complete shut down on February 19 to protest the arrest. Several international human rights organizations and many highly respected Indian academics, scholars and writers, including Arundhati Roy, Girish Karnad, Habib Tanvir, Mahashewta Devi, Praful Bidwai, Sumit Chakravarty, Sumit Sarkar, Tarun Tejpal went on to demand immediate and unconditional release of the arrested. The government, remaining unmoved, decided to press the charges and, on 22 February, Lachit got remanded to judicial custody, at the Guwahati district jail. He is to face trial on charges under sections 120B, criminal conspiracy; 121, 121A and 122, waging or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the government of India; 124, assaulting President, Governor etc., with intent to compel or restrain the exercise of any lawful power; and, other sections of the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
What explains the imperturbability of the State to the popular clamor and anger against Lachit’s arrest and humiliation? What are the claims of facts behind the arrest, their credibility and their background? What do they convey about the politics of war and peace which the government of India has been pursuing in the region? Can the human rights community in the country justify its claim of political independence if it chooses to remain silent about the State persecution of human rights defenders like Lachit who argue that the right to self-determination belongs to the regime of inalienable human rights? With the experience of Indo-Naga peace process, founded on unconditional dialogue, which has remained stagnant for over a decade, is it not necessary for the State and non-State adversaries to begin to explore conceptual spaces of shared-sovereignties allied with obligations of multiple-citizenship to forge a way out of political megalomanias that perpetuate bloodshed and existential miseries attending on armed conflicts through meaningless fixation on the issues of control and claims over territory to the exclusion of all concern about the rights and obligations of the rulers and the ruled?
Lachit became involved with the peace process out of his conviction that there is no alternative to dialogue and negotiated settlement no matter how intractable the issues of conflict seem. Knowledgeable insiders to the initiative for peace in Assam suggest that the State agencies, in their whimsical delusions about the efficacy of military solutions, have orchestrated a surreal drama of terrorist plot to scuttle the ongoing negotiations. What do the facts on the ground show?
With such concerns, South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR) requested Ram Narayan Kumar, the Director of its Understanding Impunity program, to carry out on the spot investigation and appraisal of the facts and the circumstances of Lachit’s arrest. Kumar spent six days in Guwahati from 17 to 22 February to do so. This note is based on the outcome of his investigations and discussions with independent observers, lawyers involved with the case and also with Lachit Bordoloi whom he managed to meet briefly in a Guwahati hospital, under police custody, on 21st February evening. The report does not identify all the persons Kumar met with and talked to largely from his concern for their security.
Lachit Bordoloi’s strength as an emissary for peace lies in his personal reputation as a man of integrity and his unconditional commitment to the principles of fundamental human rights for which he has worked incessantly exposing systematic aspects of abuse of power, mass atrocities and sordid connections between the security forces and former ULFA rebels co-opted into counter-insurgency operations. A commission of inquiry constituted by the State government under Justice Khagendra Nath Saikia in August 2005 formally indicted the elements within the State government and the security establishment of using surrendered members of the ULFA, generally known by the acronym of SULFA, to carry out “secret killings” of family members of leaders and cadres involved in the armed struggle in the period between 1996 and 2001. The Commission’s inquiry report, tabled in the Legislative Assembly on 15 November 2007, recommends a gradual dismantling of the unified command structure of the army, the Assam police and the central paramilitary forces as a necessary measure to prevent the recurrence of such killings. The report points out that the killings were carried out to bring pressure on the ULFA leadership to join peace talks. The Saikia Commission was constituted after two previous inquiry commissions led by former Guwahati High Court judges Meera Sharma and J. N. Sharma failed to complete their investigations.
As a member of the PCG, Lachit had become disheartened by the lack of sincerity in operationalizing the invitation to dialogue the Prime Minister had made in the government representatives in Delhi and had decided, in June 2006, to cease in his exertions. His decision to withdraw was motivated by the fact that the government seemed unwilling to abolish the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and other such draconian laws which sanctioned impunity and to establish a system of accountability for past human rights abuses committed by the security forces, including secret killings, as the basis to take the negotiations on substantial issues forward. However, persuaded by eminent citizens like Mamoni Raisom Goswami, a well known Assamese writer, to make one more attempt and with some positive proposals from the leadership of the ULFA, he, along with other members of the PCG had gone to Delhi in January 2008 and had held meetings with a number of government representatives and officials. Lachit sensed more sincerity this time. He, along with other members of the PCG had kept the initiative that led to January 2008 meetings in Delhi confidential, especially taking care not to let out the information to the State government officials from the knowledge that they had not been helpful in developing modalities of a ceasefire agreement and further negotiations during the previous rounds. This measure of caution, Lachit is now convinced, boomeranged to destroy the initiative before it could fructify.
Apparently, following the January 2008 rounds of talks in Delhi, the Union government initiated series of consultations with various agencies that had been leading counter-insurgency operations. In their assessment, ULFA is a demoralized organization with many of its senior and middle level leaders willing to collaborate with the State and the higher level of leadership itself being divided. The assessment of the counter-insurgency command structure was clearly reflected in public statements made in December and January by Air Marshal PK Barbora, then Air Officer Commanding in Chief, Eastern Air Command, that the “terror outfit”, which is “a divided lot” and “the worst enemy of the people” will be “wiped out” within five to six years. The statement was carried prominently by several newspapers.
The Telegraph carried a report on 8 February mentioning the appointment of former Chief of the Indian army, Joginder Jaswant Singh, as the Governor of Arunachal Preadesh earlier in January to point out that “the biggest military offensive against ULFA” was underway in that State. According to the report, the top officials of the State briefed the Prime Minister about the operation when he recently visited the State at the headquarters of the 82 Mountain Brigade in Lohitpur. The Governor of Assam, former Lt. General Ajai Singh, is himself believed to be firmly committed to a military solution who disapproves of the proposal of a ceasefire agreement and political negotiations with ULFA.
Two days after Lachit’s arrest, the Union Cabinet Secretary K. M. Chandrasekhar, Union Defense Secretary Vijay Singh and the Special Secretary in the Union Home Ministry M. L. Jumawat came to Guwahati reportedly to appraise themselves of the situation on the ground and the prospects and the desirability of a peace agreement with ULFA. The high powered delegation from Delhi, briefed by the Chief Secretary P. C. Sharma and the Director-General of Police of Assam, also met with the Governor separately to obtain his views. An anonymous Assam government source, quoted in a report about the visit of the Union delegation published in The Telegraph on 14 February 2008, said that the Cabinet Secretary “will certainly review these developments. If he finds there is enough evidence to support claims that ULFA is planning to hijack planes, it will definitely have an adverse impact on the peace process. The existence of a hijack plan would mean ULFA is not interested in peace.”
Thus, the orchestration of the hijacking plot, Lachit’s arrest in that connection and the attendant campaign of disinformation, howsoever outlandish and cynical they appear to us, seem to have served the antagonists of the peace process the purpose of scuttling it.
The orchestration and the arrests are indeed surreal. The police officials claimed to have arrested a top ULFA leader named Manoj Tamuly and a young woman Dharitri Sarma also belonging to ULFA on 9th of February from their hideout in Guwahati who, according to the First Information Report registered by Noonmati Police Station, went on to disclose, “on query” , that they had been deputed “for killing of three specific persons who were obstructing their struggle to segregate and liberate the State of Assam from the Indian territory” and for the “creation of panic and terror among the general public. They also disclosed a nefarious plan of hijacking aeroplanes from the airport of Borjhar to Rawalpindi of Pakistan via Thimpu, Bhutan and Afganistan…” According to the information leaked by the police and the government officials, Tamuly named Lachit Bordoloi, senior Guwahati High Court lawyer Nekibur Zaman and “many well-known personalities of the city…” with close ULFA links. A report in The Assam Tribune published on 11 February pointed out that a senior police official refused to divulge any name while admitting that the raids were being conducted following intelligence reports of a plane hijack plan.
A statement released by ULFA claimed that Manoj Tamuly had actually surrendered to the authorities at Tamulpur in Baska district way back in January 2004 and has since been working for the security agencies. Several newspaper reports, over the next days, carried sensational but obscure stories about lawyer Nekibur Zaman’s adventures in the night of Saturday, 9th of February when he was returning home after a chat with the Senior Superintendent of Police. Apparently, Zaman was chased by police vehicles and fearing for his life he jumped over the boundary wall of his own house and fractured his leg. Zaman was later admitted to a hospital where, according to several newspaper reports, a cell phone which belonged to one of his junior lawyers was seized by the police. What actually happened remains obscure with Nekibur Zaman clearly not being keen, for whatever reasons, to disclose the whole story.
In the night of Saturday, 9th of February, the police also raided the residence of Lachit Bordoloi in Guwahati while he was away to attend a meeting in Tinsukia district. Lachit’s wife Renu and their young daughter were the only ones around when the police forcibly entered the house without the presence of women police or independent witnesses and seized Lachit’s laptop, some CDs and papers without preparing an inventory. The police did write up a search memo forcing the house owner to sign it. Lachit does not know what it says. He also does not know what the police have done with his laptop.
Lachit was arrested early 11th February morning from a bus when he was on his way back to Guwahati after attending a meeting in Tinsukia. The police also arrested a TV journalist Pradip Gogoi and Suman Dutta, an employee of Air Deccan, who allegedly had been helping ULFA rebels and their Bangladesh based partners of Harkat-al-Jihadi Islami in planning and preparing the hijacking of planes from Guwahati to Rawalpindi via Thimpu in Bhutan and Afghanistan. An application submitted by the Noonmati police station before the Chief Judicial Magistrate on 12 February for the police remand of Lachit Bordoloi and Suman Dutta claimed that “during investigation sufficient evidences have been found against the arrested…that accused Shri Sumanta Dutta had link with the banned ULFA organization and also planed to hijack aeroplanes… Accused Lachit Bardoloi had also link with the banned ULFA organization and helped the organization in collecting money for carrying out its unlawful activities in the State…”. The application asked for their police remand “for a period of 10 days for further interrogation to know more details about the activities of the banned organization and to bring more culprits to book.”
Police officials provided to the media graphic details on how the conspiracy of hijacking had been hatched. Additional Superintendent of police (city) Debojit Deuri told the press that in November 2007 Dutta had visited Delhi along with Tamuli and Akash Thapa, another ULFA militant, to discuss the hijacking plans with the outfit’s senior leaders who gathered in a Karol Bagh restaurant for the purpose. Apparently, Sasadhar Choudhury, one of the most wanted ULFA leaders believed to be based in Bangladesh, was also present at the meeting. Dutta supposedly provided ULFA leaders with security-sensitive information about the airport and schedules of flights taking off from there. Datta’s father asserted that his son had not even traveled to Delhi in the said period challenging the police to produce the evidence to show that he had done so. But such challenges have no meaning in law while the case is still under investigation.
According to Lachit, the police case and the publicity around it is completely mendacious and politically motivated. Senior police officials who interrogated him themselves pleaded that the decision to launch the case was political and had been made at a high level. His interrogators did not even question him on any of the charges seriously. The FIR mentions that Lachit had been helping ULFA in collecting money.
Lachit told his interrogators that he would altogether withdraw from public life if they could even vaguely substantiate the accusation. Thereafter, the police officials never talked to him on the subject. Clearly, it is not a case which the prosecution intends to prove before a court of law. In all probability, it will eventually flounder or may get even withdrawn. It is a case that serves a political purpose of justifying military means to deal with ULFA against the protagonists of peace through justice, accountability and negotiations. It is a case that has been framed to kill the peace moves and to abort them now. (On 31 March 2007, the government invoked the National Security Act, which provides for detention to prevent any person from acting prejudicially to the defence and the security of India to keep Lachit in jail as the case seemed too flimsy to derive him the right to bail.)
It is a sordid case of legal fraud and scapegoating a genuine human rights defender who has been used by the Indian State to facilitate a peace dialogue with ULFA in Assam which, in the wisdom of India’s security establishment, is no longer expedient. Strategic calculations that inspire this wisdom may be complex and connected with its national security perceptions of threats from across the borders, including a seemingly belligerent China with its claims on the territories of Arunachal Pradesh. Such perceptions are in evidence in the recent appointment of General Joginder Jaswant Singh, the retired chief of the Indian army, as the new Governor of the State.
This is not the occasion to discuss the merits and the meanings of such perceptions. The point of significance about the arrest of Lachit Bordoloi is in the fact that it indicates the termination of that impulse of the Indian State to resolve its conflicts with the insurgent groups in the region through dialogue and negotiations, howsoever weak and ambivalent it may have been, which inspired its ceasefire agreement with the Naga nationalist group in July 1997.
From a human rights perspective, claims of sovereignty over territories and the military resolve to defend them have no meaning unless they are accompanied by genuine respect and engagement with the concerns and discontent of their inhabitants about the framework of political governance. A State that takes recourse to militarily repress, politically hound and maliciously prosecute the individuals, organizations and the people representing the sentiments of discontent, instead of engaging with them in democratic dialogue for negotiated resolutions of the issues of conflict, ceases in its democratic legitimacy to govern, becoming a conquest State and the epitome of a colonial enterprise.
The Indian human rights groups must recognize their obligations towards the people of the northeastern territories to ensure that they do not silently acquiesce in the current orchestration of a military framework of governance in the region. The recognition requires them to come together as a body to ask for transparency, an impartial investigation of the truth behind Lachit Bordoli’s arrest and the restoration of the process of seeking a negotiated settlement to the issues of conflict in the region with some respect for the principles of human rights accountability, justice and reparation.
-Ram Narayan Kumar & Tapan K. Bose
